Ensifer

Thank you.

There was a point in my early teens where I absolutely fucking hated those words. And not just those specific ones either. Here’s a few other choice samples of phrases I hated –

Follow them and contribute to their motion.

What is it’s weight?

Look at that wall.

If I had been anything but a  skinny little 110 pound hoodlum I probably would have slapped Ron Cook upside the head. He was tasked with auditing me on Objectives. Let me tell you… it was endless. Grueling. Maddening. Grindingly insufferable and punishingly horrid. I’d sooner have stuck my leg in a tree shredder just to see what came out the other side. I’d rather have checked into a Honduran dentistry college for multiple root canals… sans anesthesia.

I sometimes wonder what my auditor was thinking? He was maybe 30, a nice guy, was learning to audit and lo and behold! My mother handed me over to him and said, “Have at it. Send me a card when you get there.” He took it like a man. Always kept good TR’s in and I eventually decided that the tiny little upward lift at the corners of his mouth wasn’t a smirk. Probably some sort of genetic anomaly or something. He always had that itty-bitty smile, even when his wife Betty was giving him the stink-eye for whatever real or imagined transgression he was guilty of committing.

Ron Cook was great guy. I owe him a lot. He was Old School and not the type to complain when he had to grind out literally hundreds of hours on PC’s like me in order to be a qualified auditor.

So what got me in an Objectives state of mind? Several things actually. One was a post I read the other day on one of the ex-Scn blog s about how all these higher-ups got ordered to run objectives and do some Hard TR’s or something. At the risk of appearing to agree with anything Miscavige does (including sucking my oxygen into his lungs) I will say that the post and some of the comments seemed like whining to me. What’s the problem? You guys are tough aren’t you? Most of you are some sort of OT-Something-Or-The-Other. Can’t handle a little control can you?

Which brings up one of the other reasons Objectives have been floating around in my head space. Control. It may shock some of you… considering my age… but I am the single dad of a 7 year old boy. Control is an issue. A big one. I haven’t audited anyone for many, many years but this kid is going to get some Objectives. That’s for sure.

And the final thing? The Karate Kid.

Not the Ralph Macchio version. The newer one with Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan. I took my little boy Wyatt to see it the other night and he was entranced. In the grocery store afterward he was doing one clumsy karate kick after another… in his flip-flops. He’s mentioned it every day since then. The kid has no clue. He thinks doing stuff that’s hard is easy. I should have whipped out my cell phone and taken a video of him. Then, when he’s grown up I can show it to him and say, “See? That’s what a dork looks like.”

Let me repeat … he thinks doing stuff that’s hard is easy. That’s the typical childish attitude. And, like most children, he’ll stop when it gets hard. Unless his desire overcomes the resistance inherent in doing hard stuff. I’m not here to lecture anyone on Scientology tech but this is my blog so I’ll just bloviate a little on the subject of control, objectives and why I am not particularly negative about people at all levels of awareness getting a little 8C run on them.

For starters, when I was a young teen I was out of control. Literally. In this modern era I would have been diagnosed as ADD or something starting with hyper- . I couldn’t shut my yap in school. I was always trying to kiss the girls. I was a smart-mouth who got beat up frequently because of my inability to shut up. I ran away from home in El Paso, taking a long Greyhound ride to Dallas and upset my mother’s well-ordered life as a professional Scientologist. I got arrested for smoking cigarettes, shoplifting a 45 record and being drunk in public. On that last… remember… I grew up in Texas in the 50’s and 60’s. So it’s not like I was one of the rare teens who thought drinking was cool.

When I studied I got A’s. Except I rarely studied. I read books like most kids eat popcorn but I couldn’t focus long enough to finish a homework assignment. My father, the most patient man in the history of planet Earth, bore it all with no complaint. I suppose he understood that the only way he could control me would be to chain me up. So he provided a roof, meals and a small amount of money for clothes.

But Dolores, my mother, she had something for me. She knew that if I could be drawn into the concept of learning how to control my environment that I might subject myself to accepting that I needed to be controlled first, as the primary step towards being in control. And that’s Objectives.

How many minutes or hours of Objective auditing does a person need? If you have a cognition and then an f/n does that mean you’re done? You’re now in total control? Is there an End Phenomena to control? Isn’t that like asking if there’s an EP to Confront. Or any of the TR’s. Okay, there’s an EP. I agree. But at the same time there is life it’s own self out there and you batter away at it while it hammers back at you. Control is not some sort of finished product where, once you float the needle while holding an asparagus can you have all of it that’s available. There are degrees.

So back to The Karate Kid. Instead of the old oriental guy having the kid do “wax on, wax off” the modern version has the old oriental guy making the kid take his coat off, drop it on the ground and then hang it on a peg. Same deal. Objectives. The “lesson”… as you probably already know… is that the way to better control is through better control. The student is made to do repetitive motions until whatever underlying resistance or manifestations rise up and are blown. Then he’s made to continue again and again and again and again until all the little mini cognitions and attempts to fool the Examiner are eclipsed by a real and meaningful change in attitude.

Usually that change is accompanied by Good Indicators that are palpable, visceral and infectious. If a meter is handy I suppose there would be an f/n as well. Not that it matters. No need for a meter when something is obvious. Even dense people recognize real GIs.

From my perspective, as an auditor and former Mission Holder, the world for an auditor who has had the opportunity to co-audit tons of Objectives is a far more rich world than that of the PC who is often on a time and money budget and so doesn’t really have the opportunity to get past that first wide f/n and cognition that indicates he or she is complete and it’s time to move on.

Here’s something to think about…

For anyone who did the actual Clearing Course instead of had some ‘clear cog’  – and immediately became Org Property – you might recall that Hubbard was very clear in the materials that auditing the bank to a point of destim (or erasure) was like “digging a ditch”. He meant it. He meant for us on the course to grind that stuff out. And we did. Day in and day out, one hand sweating and one hand writing down reads. Hubbard wanted each person to have a very specific huge cognition. Not a feel good moment. He demanded that a clear cognite that they were “mocking it all up”.

Okay. Fine.

If the cognition that you’re merely mocking it all up means you’re Clear, then why are many Clears and OT’s such pissy, bitchy, PTS little pussies? Aren’t they free of a reactive mind? Well, yeah, sort of. In the same sense that someone who has a single intensive of objectives, cognites and then f/n’s is now totally in control of themselves.

A partial reason for this weird phenomena, that of OT’s dramatizing as much case as the people they’re supposed to be better than, probably lies in the paradigm shift I mentioned in this blog in the ‘About’ heading.  Nobody digs any ditches anymore. Or at least the right ditches. Roughly 10 years after I finished the Clearing Course the new Scientology was suddenly all about clearing the planet. I’ve already mentioned what a bunch of horseshit I think that is.

Clearing an entire planet the old way does present some issues. Like, say, convincing 6 or 7 billion people to subject themselves to several hundred hours of auditing, weeks and months of intense training, then going to a distant place and grinding away for a few hundred more hours until they eventually realize the only case they actually have is the one they believe they have. That’s an insanely stupid idea. But hmmm… what if people just kinda-sorta accidentally went clear along the way? You know, like while doing a Dianetic co-audit or maybe while being bull-baited on the Comm Course. That would certainly speed things up. Now instead of an insanely stupid idea we have one that is merely stupid.

Seems to me what this really comes down to is deciding what you got into Scientology for in the first place. And perhaps what it is you expect to extract from the tech. If you honestly believe that the planet is going to become clear then good on ya! /cue Twilight Zone theme/ If you, like me, want this stuff because it will make you stronger and gives you the tools and strength to be more powerful, more calm and an asset to those you care about… then what’s the rush? I never felt like I was in a particular hurry to win, I just knew that I would win and get my money’s worth if I understood that I was digging a ditch and building an experiential track and base of self-awareness that would serve me in tough times and hard situations.

So my mother gave me what I needed. A shovel and a guy to show me how to use it. That’s a powerful chunk of love. And when I think about my little boy it’s almost embarrassing how much of that same love I have for him. I absolutely do not want him shortchanged and used as a tool for some psychotic and ridiculously hazy goal of a megalomaniac and his troop of zombies.  At the same time, if anyone ought to have the same opportunities I was given by my mother, her fellow Scientologists and men of endless patience like Ron Cook and my dad, then my little boy is my choice for the prize. I plan to ruin him forever for the CofS by seeing to it he knows how to dig a proper ditch.

Another thing I want. I wouldn’t mind it if someday Wyatt heard the phrase “give me that hand” and thought to himself – I absolutely fucking hate those words.